The effective supergravity of Little String Theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a minimal supersymmetric five-dimensional supergravity model that captures key features of the holographic dual of little string theory, including supersymmetry breaking and connections to clockwork models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel minimal supersymmetric extension of 5D dilaton-gravity tailored for little string theory holography, linking supergravity, supersymmetry breaking, and clockwork models.

Findings

The model exhibits a linear dilaton solution breaking half of the supersymmetries.

It connects supersymmetric supergravity with non-supersymmetric clockwork models.

The framework captures essential properties of the holographic dual of little string theory.

Abstract

In this work we present the minimal supersymmetric extension of the five-dimensional dilaton-gravity theory that captures the main properties of the holographic dual of little string theory. It is described by a particular gauging of $\mathcal{N}=2$ supergravity coupled with one vector multiplet associated to the string dilaton, along the $U(1)$ subgroup of $SU(2)$ R-symmetry. The linear dilaton in the fifth coordinate solution of the equations of motion (with flat string frame metric) breaks half of the supersymmetries to $\mathcal{N}=1$ in four dimensions. The non-supersymmetric version of this model was found recently as a continuum limit of a discretised version of the so-called clockwork setup.